HBO Leads the Way at 2014 Creative Arts Emmys with 15 Honors, NBC Second with 10

HBO led the 2014 Creative Arts Emmy Awards with 15 awards, including four for drama series Game of Thrones and True Detective. NBC was second with 10 honors, five of them for the long-running sketch-comedy series Saturday Night Live.

The ceremony was held at NOKIA Theatre L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles. FXM will air an edited version of the event on Sunday, August 24, at 8 p.m. ET/PT and 10 p.m. ET/PT. It will also be streamed in its entirety on Emmys.com at 12:00 p.m. PT / 3:00 p.m. ET on Monday, August 25, prior to the Backstage LIVE and Emmy preshows.

Achievement in animation, commercials, interactive media, children’s series, nonfiction series, reality series and other programming were also honored, as well as four acting categories and the Television Academy’s Governors Award.

Outstanding guest actress in a comedy series went to Uzo Aduba for Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black; outstanding guest actress in a drama series was won by Allison Janney for Showtime’s Masters of Sex; Joe Morton of ABC’s Scandal was named outstanding guest actor in a drama series; and Jimmy Fallon scored outstanding guest actor in a comedy series for hosting NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Jane Lynch took the prize for outstanding host for a reality or reality competition for NBC’s Hollywood Game Night.

Among programs with multiple wins, SNL's five awards was tops: for costumes for a variety program or special (Tom Broecker and Eric Justian); hairstyling for a multi-camera series or special (Bettie O. Rogers, Jodi Mancuso, Inga Thrasher, Jennifer Serio Stauffer, Cara Hannah Sullivan and Joe Whitmeyer); non-prosthetic makeup for a multi-camera series or special (Louie Zakarian, Amy Tagliamonti, Sarah Egan, Daniela Zivkovic and Melanie Demitri); directing for a variety series (Don Roy King) and Fallon’s win for guest actor in a comedy.

Fox/NatGeo’s Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, HBO’s Game of Thrones, PBS’s Sherlock: His Last Vow (Masterpiece) and HBO’s True Detective each prevailed in four categories.

The night was notable for a strong showing among online-based programming, particularly from Netflix, which won seven awards — three for the documentary The Square, three for the comedy series Orange Is the New Black and one for the drama series House of Cards.

Other digital winners included FunnyorDie.com, which won in the category of outstanding short-format live-action entertainment program for Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama, and ESPN, which took the award for outstanding short-format nonfiction program for 30 for 30 Shorts, part of the sports titan’s Grantland.com website.

The Governors Award, which is bestowed annually to individuals or organizations who have made significant contributions to television, was granted posthumously to Marion Dougherty, a casting director who helped to shape the profession in the early days of the medium and cemented its importance in the production process.

Actor Jon Voight — a nominee this year for his performance in the Showtime drama Ray Donovan — spoke in tribute to Dougherty, who died in 2011 at age 88. Once described by Clint Eastwood as “the dean of casting directors,” she cast more than 500 episodes of the NBC anthology series Kraft Television Theatre, as well as the series Naked City and Route 66.

Along the way, she shaped the casting profession and provided early opportunities to numerous young performers who later became major stars, including Warren Beatty, James Dean, Robert Duvall, Dustin Hoffman, Jack Klugman, Jack Lemmon, Christopher Walken and Voight, who credits her for advancing his career when he was starting out.

Dougherty made another enduring contribution to TV history when she encouraged producer Norman Lear to cast Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton as Archie and Edith Bunker in the classic comedy series All in the Family.

The 2014 Creative Arts show also featured an In Memoriam montage that included dozens of animators, writers, special effects artists, casting directors, art directors and professionals in many other crafts who died over the past year.

An interesting trend of the night’s awards was a number of Emmy wins by well-known performers in unexpected categories. For instance, Tate Donovan, best known for his work as an actor, shared the award for ESPN, having directed the short film Front & Center, about the relationship between tennis superstar Arthur Ashe and his brother Johnnie. Joseph Gordon Levitt, also best known as an actor, shared the award for Pivot.tv as a producer of hitRECord on TV, and performer Martin Short shared the award for variety special as a producer of TNT’s AFI Life Achievement Award: A Tribute to Mel Brooks. Yet another familiar performer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, won an Emmy as a producer of Showtime’s Years of Living Dangerously. And finally, after 33 nominations, Bill Maher won his first Emmy as an executive producer of HBO’s Vice.

The 80 awards were presented by performers and producers from more than 20 series and specials.

This year’s executive producers were Kevin Hamburger and Mark Watters, co-chairs of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards Committee. The producer — for the 20th time — was Spike Jones, Jr. The director was Chris Donovan.

This year's remaining Emmys will be announced at the Primetime Emmy Awards telecast on Monday, August 25. Hosted by Seth Meyers, the show will air live coast-to-coast on NBC from NOKIA Theatre L.A. LIVE in downtown Los Angeles. The executive producer is Don Mischer.

A complete list of the 2014 Creative Arts Emmy winners is available here.